Back To School

Back to school.

Time to start shooting. 

A fourteen year old was taken into custody for the murder of two teachers and two fellow students. This time it was in Winder, Georgia.  Apalachee High School joins a long and seemingly endless list of places where "we never thought something like this could happen."

Time to change our thinking. Not as long as the weapon of choice continues to be so readily available. The shooter's father insisted that there was no way that his son would use any of the guns in his house "unsupervised." He was not allowed. The shooter, whose name is sadly ironic, Colt, apparently did not take dad's admonitions to heart. So much so that he was a known potential threat to the FBI a year ago after making online threats. Colt was not arrested at that time because there was no probably cause. 

Well, on Wednesday, they got it. Four dead. Nine more wounded. 

Hundreds more traumatized. Who wants to go back to school when every time you pass that room you see the blood and bullet holes? We prepare our students to duck and cover. How to barricade a door. We expect to be able to keep the children safe, with the exception of a band-aid here or there when they fall and scrape their knees. 

We are only moments away from the refrain from the nutjobs who insist that shooting back is the answer. 

We already know the sadly inevitable punchline: The shooter used an "AR platform rifle" to kill and maim the people at his school. 

Thoughts and prayers were tossed out as well, our best known defense against such things. Authorities said they would "bolster patrols" in the area, which should have the effect of making everyone who survived feel more secure. 

Safe? That's another matter entirely. As long as we continue to bury our heads in the collective sand pit of the "spirit" of the Second Amendment, completely unnecessary tragedies like the one in Georgia and all of those that preceded it will make it hard to sleep at night. For those with a conscience. For those with a soul. 

Now back to school.